DISQUS

Louis Gray · 10 months ago

Post by Rob Diana: http://www.friendfeed.com/robdiana

Mark Trapp · 10 months ago

I'd suggest watching Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist (IMDb Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0981227/) to you and anyone who is skeptical of a use-case for location based services. The entire plot wasn't all that contrived, and could've been completely mitigated if a few of the characters had Brightkite.

Just thinking about my high school and college days, to know where my friends were and for my friends to know where I was would've solved a lot of problems. As I've grown older, the number of friends in my general area has gone down, so it's become less useful.

I think you'll see Brightkite and Latitude more for younger people or people in urban areas, and more task-oriented location based services for the rest of us. To be able to go into a strange new place, take out my iPhone, and find the nearest <insert place I need to find> is awesome. Or look at OnStar and E911: if you have a problem that's dependent on your location, it's far more convenient and accurate to be queried for your location instead of "Uh, well... I think I saw a hill a couple hours back... uh... I don't know, it's a field of some sort... I think...".

robdiana · 10 months ago

Mark, I agree with the "find the closest restaurant" or that type of usage, but the whole social network angle just baffles me. It just seems like a solution looking for a problem. I could see the high school usage, but even that seems like a feature of something not a major product release. Maybe I am just getting old :)

StevenHodson · 10 months ago

Nothing wrong with getting old Rob - one of the good side effects is that wool everyone like to pull over their eyes starts to fall away :)

Mark Trapp · 10 months ago

I can think of a couple other use-cases: families, for instance. Is Jimmy at his friend's house or is he at soccer practice? Where's mom? Is she coming to pick me up? Or perhaps market research or advance teams: where's my team member? Or hey, I'm at a concert, got up to get a beer, and I forgot where me and my friends were sitting. Heck, affix a device to a dog and find out where he is if he gets lost (already available, but it'd be cool if it were integrated with everything else).

To think of it like knowing where someone is every minute of every day is the wrong way to look at it: it's more like knowing where someone is when I need to find them.

People are creative: Facebook, Twitter, Text messaging, MMS, etc. all had questionable values. But people made them into what they are now. If these companies can make it easier to use, I have no doubt it'll be as much of a no brainer as text messaging has become.

StevenHodson · 10 months ago

I'm sorry but all this location based stuff in nothing short of just plain old crap. It's bad enought that 'social media' has been as bastardized as bad as it has in so many cases to mean nothing more than "BLAH BLAH It's all about me YADA YADA YADA". This addition by Google doesn't even approach the cool factor let alone be useful.

Louis Gray · 10 months ago

I think the next step is for Google to post the temperature and weather conditions of where you are.

(Steven Hodson posted this e-mail from Grumpyville, Ontario, where it is 4 degrees.)

StevenHodson · 10 months ago

it wouldn't surprise me at all and of course the crowd would go ga-ga over it :)

Svetlana Gladkova · 10 months ago

Yes, that's what's really amazing: we are moving to total transparency that does not really seem to be actually reasonable or needed.

robdiana · 10 months ago

Steven, please don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel :)

gholmes · 10 months ago

I think it's a natural progression. With mobile phones, we get an expectation of constant availability for communications. The next step is constant locatibility, right?

What I want to know is, at what point will the curve loop back? I see some of it in "email breaks" I hear some companies have. I live closer to the anti- end of the social spectrum, so I do have a bias, but I'd there are times I'd like to bury my mobile phone. It's nice to have days warm enough to drop the top on my car - can't even hear the phone ring.

robdiana · 10 months ago

I would normally agree that it is a natural progression, but I just do not see what problem it solves yet. The constant availability will never get to the mainstream, mainly because most people do not care to be connected all the time.

gholmes · 10 months ago

I don't think it solves anything. It's only location. To mean something new, it needs to be paired with context.

Rich · 10 months ago

I feel like this is the "Where's The Party" feature. If is only useful as long as you have a group of people who want to find each other without making plans.

This is one of the feature will be more useful the younger you are. That is the sad fact.

Ali · 10 months ago

yeah , sounds to be an exciting feature, but got to see if this is really an added advantage , coz i still doubt if how this feature can be an additional benefit apart from tracking location